Sphere Language
Sphere Language is a fictional language derived from Ancient Greek, and hence could be categorized into the Indo-European language. Unlike other derivatives of Greek such as the Baktrian language, Sphere Language is derived exclusively from Ancient Greek, and hence does not use any phonetics not employed by the Greeks (such as the "sh" sound). As can be shown by the name, this language is spoken almost exclusively by the Spheres. As a language, Sphere Language is used alongside the new New Koine Greek, a language created by the combined efforts of the Arche and the Sphere in a search for a lingua franca. Sphere Alphabet As a direct descendant of the Greek one, the Sphere Alphabet retains all the alphabet used by the Ancient Greeks, but also revive the Digamma, one of the defunct letters from Archaic Greek. However, the usage of the Digamma is very rare, limited almost exclusively to neologisms and proper nouns, such as Phovellis (Sphere Greek: Φωϝέλλις) Dialects There are significant deviation between the Sphere languages across the large distances of the Polysitonian landscape, although such deviations are limited only to the Zyngian dialect, spoken by the wild Spheres in the rainforest of Zyngos and certainly not spoken by the Emporionian Spheres, who speak the standard dialect, and the Chian dialect, spoken by the inhabitants of the Chian archipelago. Given the linguistical roots on Ancient Greek, Spheres call those who speak the actual dialects of Ancient Greek "neochmoi" or "kainoi". Morphology Refer to: Ancient Greek As a language derived from an earlier Indo-European language, Sphere Language is highly inflected. Unlike its roots, the Sphere language however does not attempt to preserve the Proto-Indo-European roots, and has been very liberal with the declensions. In fact, the Sphere simplification of declensions, adopting a single set of inflections for all verbs (save for the fact that it still utilizes the deponent verbs and middle tense of Ancient Greek), sets the Sphere language from the other Greek languages. This simplification was very appealing to newcomers speaking Ancient Greek or Koine Greek, and this resulted in the amalgation of language that created the New Koine Greek. In addition, the Sphere language does not use the aorist form as to speak, but still uses the concept of augments, and also have separate prefixes to denote completion of action to function as a substitute for the aorist. Cultural terms Given its necessary difference in psyche and surroundings, the Spheres use couple of unique terms of their own. Terms that are already in use by Ancient Greeks but with new meanings *δημοτης, which means commoner, although the Lagikoi also use it to mean a common soldier (i.e. Private). This is in contrast to the modern Greek usage of the word στρατιώτης as the counterpart to the rank private: the Lagikoi use it to refer to soldiers in general. *λοχαγος, meaning leader of a Lochos. however, this term is fairly in line with the Lagikoi rank counterpart of a sergeant, who is in charge of a squad of 8 to 14 soldier (in modern terms). The lochos was roughly just that, having an inconsistent size between 8 to 16 men if used in the file sense, although there were irregular usage of the term lochos, such as the Spartan lochos of 640, and the Hieros Lochos ton Thebon of 300. In the Sphere sense, the term lochos is used almost purely in the file sense. Category:Spheres Category:Languages